The present invention relates to a system and method for payment receipt using a two-dimensional (2D) code, and more particularly, to a system and method for payment receipt, capable of simplifying a settlement process using a bill where a 2D code storing certain information is imprinted.
Generally, the sellers or the service providers have used a billing method (hereinafter, referred to as “OCR method”) using an optical character recognition (OCR) card in order to ask the buyers or the service-beneficiaries to pay for the provision of material or immaterial goods, or services, such as electricity, service water, milk, newspaper, security, and so on. A process of the OCR method, in which the sellers or the service providers (hereinafter, referred to as “payee”), who provide goods or services, send a bill to the buyer or the service-beneficiaries (hereinafter, referred to as “payer”), who receive goods or services, and the payer pays for them, is as follows:
First, the payee makes a contract with an authorized institution such as Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (hereinafter, referred also to as “the FTCI”) for the use of OCR method so that the payee is assigned a payee code from the FTCI. Also, the payee provides the FTCI with information on the payers who receive goods or services and the like, and is assigned a payer code from the FTCI. In a condition where a payee should bill to a payer, the payee informs the FTCI of the payment amount for a period by the payer registered in the FTCI.
Then, the FTCI makes out information on the payee, payer, payment amount, and payment due with OCR codes, imprints them onto OCR sheet, and provides the payee with the OCR sheet as in the form of a bill. The payee then transmits the bill with OCR codes to the payer by mail and the like.
The payer goes to the financial institution while carrying the bill and cash, pays the payment amount with cash to a receiving teller in the financial institution, together with presenting the bill, and gets a receipt certifying the payment. The financial institution then provides the bill received from the payer to the FTCI.
The FTCI receiving the bill reads out the OCR codes printed in the bill, and sorts information of the bill by the payee, payer, and payment amount. The FTCI provides the financial institution, who has provided the bill, with information on the payee and the payment amount among the sorted information items, and provides the payee with information on the payer among the items.
In addition, the financial institution that has received information on the payee and payment amount from the FTCI remits the payment amount to the account of a financial institution that the payee has previously designated using a method such as a transfer to an account.
Further, the payee who has received information on the payer from the FTCI compares the payer information received from the FTCI with one that the payee has in order to sort the payer who has not paid the payment amount, so that the payee either sends the payer a separate notice of arrears, or asks the same payer to pay for the payment while adding the former payment amount to the next period bill.
However, the OCR method has problems as follows:
First, in order for the payee to use the above mentioned method, the payee should pay a fee both to FTCI and the financial institution that receives the bill. Particularly, since the bill provided from the FTCI is made out through the imprint of OCR ink onto an OCR card, and the OCR card and the ink are expensive to manufacture, the payee has a burden to pay the FTCI a fee including a cost for using an expensive OCR card. Also, in using the OCR method, as seen in the foregoing, many steps should be processed. In particular, considerable periods are consumed in provided an OCR card (a bill for payment) by the financial institution to the FTCI and in reading-out the OCR card and providing read-out information back to the financial institution by the institute. The process period taken between the FTCI and the financial institution consequently delays a time to pay the payee the money paid, so that for the delayed time, money liquidity is decreased, additional financial expenses occur, and a chance to gain a financial income is lost.
Further, since most time limits for payment are designated to month-ends, near the month-ends, the financial institution is crowded with the payers trying to complete the payment so that the payers spend a lot of time waiting to complete the payment as well as the financial institution may have a burden to increase labor costs due to the expanding of separate manpower to receive the payment. Furthermore, since the method provides the payee with the bill using an off-line method such as mail and the like, it takes a long time to deliver, and there is a risk of misdelivery. In this case, although there is such risk of misdelivery, the payer may totally suffer damage caused by non-receipt of the bill, so that the payer always has a fear of suffering accidental damage as well as the payee may have a complaint from the payer.
Meanwhile, in order to solve the problem particularly concerned to the crowdedness of the financial institution at the ends of the months and to labor cost increase, the financial institutions have recently raising weight on using an automated teller machine (ATM). In such case, the financial institution installs the ATM first at the place where it receives the payment. Then, when the payer puts into the ATM the bill for payment and the bankbook, or credit or cash card of the payer, the ATM reads out information on the payment amount among OCR codes written to the bill for payment, and withdraws the payment amount from the account of the bankbook or the card.
However, even by the method, as similar to the above OCR method, there still remains the problems in that the payee should pay a fee both to the financial institution and the FTCI, and it takes a long time until the money paid is transferred to the payee. Further, the OCR method has to use an OCR card, which however, is sensitive to an external damage so that even by slight damage due to an external shock, the ATM cannot read-out the card. In this case, the payer should pay the payment amount directly to the receiving teller in the financial institution.
Further, instead of the prior OCR method, a method for payment receipt using a 2D code has being recently developed. This method is one that instead of transmitting an OCR code made out from the FTCI in its entirety to the payer, the OCR codes are converted into a 2D code and a bill for payment including the converted code is transmitted to the payee. Then, the payer inputs into the ATM the bill for payment where the 2D code is imprinted and the bankbook or the cash or credit card of the payer, and the ATM senses the 2D code instead of the prior OCR codes. The financial institution converts the sensed 2D code information into OCR codes, and provides the code to FTCI using wireless or wire communication method. Since the bill for payment using 2D code is much lower in failure rate when the ATM reads out the OCR code, in comparison with the prior method using the OCR codes (generally, in case of using the OCR codes, 3% or more damage makes the read-out of the code impossible, but in case of using the present-known 2D code, even 37% damage can read-out various kinds of information successively.), even in case that the payment receipt is done not directly by the receiving teller but by the ATM, the failure rate for receipt can be considerably reduced.
However, although using the method, eventually, information sensed from the ATM is interpreted into the OCR codes and transmitted to the FTCI, and the OCR codes are interpreted by the FTCI so that proper information is transmitted to the financial institution and the payee, respectively. Consequently, there still remained the problems of such as duplicate fee both to the financial institution and the FTCI, requiring a long time until the money paid is transferred to the payee, and a risk of misdelivery of the bill due to mail delivery.
Further, in case of the payment receipt method using the OCR codes or the 2D code, since after the payment receipt, the financial institution provides the payee only the personnel details and total money paid of the respective payers, the payee cannot obtain information on what item did the payer pay. That is, the payee cannot obtain detail information of the payer, for example, on whether or not the payer who is a few months behind in his dues paid only a portion of the payment amount and on whether or not with the payment the arrearage has been completely released. Accordingly, in order for the payee to obtain detail payment information on the respective payers, the payee should proceed a step of inputting information written to the OCR card and information on the payer and the amount of payment which is informed from the financial institution, again into a database, and sorting the same, which however is a time and labor-consuming working, causing the expenses of the payer, i.e., the business taxpayer, to be increased.
Furthermore, generally, the sellers or service provider tries to improve efficiency of their company by utilizing a variety of management programs, for example, such as tax accounting programs, which calculate and record information on such as sales, tax amount, advance payments, liabilities and so on. However, since the payment receipt system and the management system in the prior art are not linked with each other, the sellers or the service provider (the payee) has directly inputted information on the amount of money paid by the payer, i.e., information on sales, into the management program, and the management program has outputted various information on which the business taxpayer demands using the inputted information. This method of direct input of various information into the management program makes the time and expense increased, and causes various problems such as information input errors.